Improved Dual-Protected Ring Signature for Security and Privacy of Vehicular Communications in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

As illegal access control, privacy disclosure and other threats in vehicular ad-hoc networks become more prevalent, and the importance of safety and privacy protection in vehicular communications grows significantly. The current communication protocols in vehicular communications primarily guarantee infrangibility and unconditional anonymity to achieve security. On board units in vehicular ad-hoc networks form a shared loop called ring signature. In this paper, we propose a dual-protected ring signature algorithm to protect both sending and receiving of a message with secure transmission. We also introduce road side unit-assisted looping to increase ringing probability. The performance of these algorithms is analyzed theoretically and compared with the standard ring signature algorithm in a real vehicle environment. The analysis and comparison results show that the dual-protected ring signature algorithm is superior to the standard ring signature in security, ringing probability, and communication efficiency, and it satisfactorily meets the requirements of secure communication and privacy protection.